panadol no more

[daring dragoon]

learnt today that panadol will no longer be available in Trinidad and also the seven seas cod liver oil is not available.

[paid_influencer]

lmao, i told you guys to hoard medication. I told you

[paid_influencer]

my seven seas done, switched to generic fish oil capsules in the ziplock bags dispensed from the pharmacy.

relatives with money and difficulty swallowing big capsules using omegaXL. tiny friggin capsules and a desiccant in the bottle to absorb the fishy smell. $300 a bottle or some madness for that

[nervewrecker]

I think it have no valium awhile either.

Venezuela here we come.

So where allyuh fellaz feel is the best place to go? Guyana? Surinam? Grenada? Land cheap in Grenada eh

[maj. tom]

ok well look for Paracetamol/acetaminophen or Tylenol or Buckley's tablet, or etc. etc. There's like a dozen products that are the exact same thing. Panadol is just a UK brand name. You go ahead and hoard.

[DMan7]

So what them Hospital and Health Center doctors going to recommend when sick people come to them now?

[maj. tom]

my seven seas done, switched to generic fish oil capsules in the ziplock bags dispensed from the pharmacy.

relatives with money and difficulty swallowing big capsules using omegaXL. tiny friggin capsules and a desiccant in the bottle to absorb the fishy smell. $300 a bottle or some madness for that

are there any clues to tell you that OmegaXL is a complete scam? Maybe it's the 59 ads on tv where every paid "actor's" testimony is a lie? Even the one who say she get in an accident and the doctor tell her one thing but she buy Omega XL and it cure? i dunno.....

[paid_influencer]

right now, there's enough for everybody.

now is the time to hoard.

don't wait until there is shortage to hoard. it would be too late then

[aaron17]

No pharmaton too

[Numb3r4]

Can you elaborate? Serious question.

Is it an issue with the distributer not being able to purchase from the manufacturer?
Is is a foreign exchange or supply chain issue?
Might there be another distributer that may be willing to pick up the product?

Was customer demand down on account of the current pricing and so it didn't make it viable to import?

With regards to Seven Seas is if specific to only the Cod Liver Oil? Do they have other products that they still have available in Trinidad and Tobago? If so could it be just because of lowered demand that some lines are being dropped?

Any further information is greatly appreciated.

[paid_influencer]

I think it have no valium awhile either.

Venezuela here we come.

So where allyuh fellaz feel is the best place to go? Guyana? Surinam? Grenada? Land cheap in Grenada eh

guyana looking like the place. i seeing plenty my relatives going there for vacation and chit and i like ?? like i behind on the times

[AlphaMan]

What you need Panadol for.
You allowed 30 grams..

[triniterribletim]

I think it have no valium awhile either.

Venezuela here we come.

So where allyuh fellaz feel is the best place to go? Guyana? Surinam? Grenada? Land cheap in Grenada eh

guyana looking like the place. i seeing plenty my relatives going there for vacation and chit and i like ?? like i behind on the times

Guyana and Suriname and Grenada are still susceptible to supply shocks as they manufacture and produce relatively little. Brazil doesn't have those problems. Meds are cheap here. They have easily available locally manufactured generics. The CoL is much lower here than Trinidad. Only real trade offs are the language barrier and driving Left Hand.

[nervewrecker]

I think it have no valium awhile either.

Venezuela here we come.

So where allyuh fellaz feel is the best place to go? Guyana? Surinam? Grenada? Land cheap in Grenada eh

guyana looking like the place. i seeing plenty my relatives going there for vacation and chit and i like ?? like i behind on the times

Hadda make friend there fast dan.

Everyone can't say "ah know tr1ad", they will find it kinda suspect.

Chicken curry it is, chicken curry my friend.

[alfa]

ok well look for Paracetamol/acetaminophen or Tylenol or Buckley's tablet, or etc. etc. There's like a dozen products that are the exact same thing. Panadol is just a UK brand name. You go ahead and hoard.

Otravin out of stock months now as well. Almost no replacement available. May really have to horde some stuff

[hover11]

Can you elaborate? Serious question.

Is it an issue with the distributer not being able to purchase from the manufacturer?
Is is a foreign exchange or supply chain issue?
Might there be another distributer that may be willing to pick up the product?

Was customer demand down on account of the current pricing and so it didn't make it viable to import?

With regards to Seven Seas is if specific to only the Cod Liver Oil? Do they have other products that they still have available in Trinidad and Tobago? If so could it be just because of lowered demand that some lines are being dropped?

Any further information is greatly appreciated.

I believe it is a foreign exchange issue it isn't only panadol but a number of medications are in short supply and the PM said a few months ago that there will come a point where we will have to decide whether to import cars or medication

[DMan7]

Is T&T turning into the Titanic or what?

[hover11]

PM: Forex needed for medicine more than needed for cars

THE Prime Minister has responded to car dealers' complaints over measures in the budget negatively affecting the industry saying the use of foreign exchange (forex) to purchase medicine takes precedence over the purchase of vehicles.

On Monday, Finance Minister Colm Imbert announced the removal of tax concessions on the importation of private vehicles and that the permissible age of imported foreign used cars will be reduced from four to three years, along with a reduction in the importation quota by 30 per cent.

Imbert said there were too many cars in TT with annual importation being 250,000 private vehicles which was causing "serious leakage" of forex to the tune of US$400 million.

President of the TT Automotive Dealers Association Visham Babwah said removal of tax concessions will escalate vehicle prices and cause hundreds of businesses to shut down. Dr Rowley was asked about the dealers' concerns on Tuesday following the opening of the Diego Martin Health Centre.

He said all cars are obtained by foreign exchange expenditure and noted the drastic decline in foreign exchange earning. "I will simply say to the people in the car business, used car and new car and whatever, if I have a choice to make between ensuring we have foreign exchange to buy medicine for the hospital, I would restrict the expenditure on cars. Because one thing this country is not short of is motor cars. But we cannot be short of medicine for the hospitals."

He said adjustments have to be made and all will be affected, some far more than others. "As for used cars and new cars they are not the highest on the priority list."

"(With our deficit) something has to give. And it is all about priority, the options we choose and the wider national interest." Asked about a possible conglomerate taking over all NP gas stations, which have been put up for sale, he said that Imbert had made it clear that where NP has stations, the first option will go to the people operating it.

He recalled there was a time when the State did not own gas stations. "So let us stop behaving as though this is how it has to be and if it is not like that then 'oh God we go dead!'"

He said the model was being changed to better serve the country and Government will ensure the change does not worsen the situation or give any undue advantage or disadvantage. He said the consumer will now play a bigger role.

"You wouldn't go to a gas station where the price is highest, would you? If the price of oil goes up and takes the price of fuel with it you wouldn't run up and down in your car because you feel to drive. You would make a decision as to when you travel, how many people you carry, how often you travel (and) how much fuel you burn.

"So you now have the lever in your hand to determine how you can influence your fuel expense. And that is how the economy changes from a benign one where Government picks up the bill, doesn't matter how irresponsible you are, to one where you have some responsibility.

"And the same thing will apply with turning off the water, turning off the lights, driving up and down the road, because you now are going to be responsible for some of that cost," he said.

[Les Bain]

Meanwhile, Trinis supposed to be distracted that COVID done and carnival back! with a vengeance, is Christmas in July, and the 75 genders will be using the same toilet soon.

[adnj]

Some pharmacists have told me that certain drugs were in short supply because some of the chemicals that manufacturers needed for production were difficult to obtain because of shipping issues or manufacturer shutdowns in China due to COVID.

It's hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt.

[nervewrecker]

I eh know about all that jibberish but some info on what I gathered on the collapse of vene.

A huge gap developed between the lower and upper class.

The country used to be self sufficient.

Corrupt officials started appointing square pegs in round holes. They cant function in the respective roles, a lot of talent got stifled and decisions were made that did not benefit the people but those fueling the rift between both classes.

Eventually foreign produce started stocking shelves that gave local produce competition and forced them out of business.

Brain drain began where the smart left and stupid remained and outnumbered the smart.

Eventually they became dependent on external forces for necessities, various entities were taken over from competition, foreign establishments or corrupt individuals, forex became an issue, supply and demand forces came into play with price control via greed and inflation.

Grocery shelves started to get scanty, COL went up so high where the lower class could barely afford anything while those on the next end of the divide lived comfortable.

also, look into the universe 25 simulation.

[nervewrecker]

Over the last few hundred years, the human population of Earth has seen an increase, taking us from an estimated one billion in 1804 to seven billion in 2017. Throughout this time, concerns have been raised that our numbers may outgrow our ability to produce food, leading to widespread famine.

Some – the Malthusians – even took the view that as resources ran out, the population would "control" itself through mass deaths until a sustainable population was reached. As it happens, advances in farming, changes in farming practices, and new farming technology have given us enough food to feed 10 billion people, and it's how the food is distributed which has caused mass famines and starvation. As we use our resources and the climate crisis worsens, this could all change – but for now, we have always been able to produce more food than we need, even if we have lacked the will or ability to distribute it to those that need it.

But while everyone was worried about a lack of resources, one behavioral researcher in the 1970s sought to answer a different question: what happens to society if all our appetites are catered for, and all our needs are met? The answer – according to his study – was an awful lot of cannibalism shortly followed by an apocalypse.

John B Calhoun set about creating a series of experiments that would essentially cater to every need of rodents, and then track the effect on the population over time. The most infamous of the experiments was named, quite dramatically, Universe 25.

In this study, he took four breeding pairs of mice and placed them inside a "utopia". The environment was designed to eliminate problems that would lead to mortality in the wild. They could access limitless food via 16 food hoppers, accessed via tunnels, which would feed up to 25 mice at a time, as well as water bottles just above. Nesting material was provided. The weather was kept at 68°F (20°C), which for those of you who aren't mice is the perfect mouse temperature. The mice were chosen for their health, obtained from the National Institutes of Health breeding colony. Extreme precautions were taken to stop any disease from entering the universe.

As well as this, no predators were present in the utopia, which sort of stands to reason. It's not often something is described as a "utopia, but also there were lions there picking us all off one by one".

The experiment began, and as you'd expect, the mice used the time that would usually be wasted in foraging for food and shelter for having excessive amounts of sexual intercourse. About every 55 days, the population doubled as the mice filled the most desirable space within the pen, where access to the food tunnels was of ease.

When the population hit 620, that slowed to doubling around every 145 days, as the mouse society began to hit problems. The mice split off into groups, and those that could not find a role in these groups found themselves with nowhere to go.

"In the normal course of events in a natural ecological setting somewhat more young survive to maturity than are necessary to replace their dying or senescent established associates," Calhoun wrote in 1972. "The excess that find no social niches emigrate."

Here, the "excess" could not emigrate, for there was nowhere else to go. The mice that found themself with no social role to fill – there are only so many head mouse roles, and the utopia was in no need of a Ratatouille-esque chef – became isolated.

"Males who failed withdrew physically and psychologically; they became very inactive and aggregated in large pools near the center of the floor of the universe. From this point on they no longer initiated interaction with their established associates, nor did their behavior elicit attack by territorial males," read the paper. "Even so, they became characterized by many wounds and much scar tissue as a result of attacks by other withdrawn males."

The withdrawn males would not respond during attacks, lying there immobile. Later on, they would attack others in the same pattern. The female counterparts of these isolated males withdrew as well. Some mice spent their days preening themselves, shunning mating, and never engaging in fighting. Due to this they had excellent fur coats, and were dubbed, somewhat disconcertingly, the "beautiful ones".

The breakdown of usual mouse behavior wasn't just limited to the outsiders. The "alpha male" mice became extremely aggressive, attacking others with no motivation or gain for themselves, and regularly raped both males and females. Violent encounters sometimes ended in mouse-on-mouse cannibalism.

Despite – or perhaps because – their every need was being catered for, mothers would abandon their young or merely just forget about them entirely, leaving them to fend for themselves. The mother mice also became aggressive towards trespassers to their nests, with males that would normally fill this role banished to other parts of the utopia. This aggression spilled over, and the mothers would regularly kill their young. Infant mortality in some territories of the utopia reached 90 percent.

This was all during the first phase of the downfall of the "utopia". In the phase Calhoun termed the "second death", whatever young mice survived the attacks from their mothers and others would grow up around these unusual mouse behaviors. As a result, they never learned usual mice behaviors and many showed little or no interest in mating, preferring to eat and preen themselves, alone.

The population peaked at 2,200 – short of the actual 3,000-mouse capacity of the "universe" – and from there came the decline. Many of the mice weren't interested in breeding and retired to the upper decks of the enclosure, while the others formed into violent gangs below, which would regularly attack and cannibalize other groups as well as their own. The low birth rate and high infant mortality combined with the violence, and soon the entire colony was extinct. During the mousepocalypse, food remained ample, and their every need completely met.

Calhoun termed what he saw as the cause of the collapse "behavioral sink".

"For an animal so simple as a mouse, the most complex behaviors involve the interrelated set of courtship, maternal care, territorial defence and hierarchical intragroup and intergroup social organization," he concluded in his study.

"When behaviors related to these functions fail to mature, there is no development of social organization and no reproduction. As in the case of my study reported above, all members of the population will age and eventually die. The species will die out."

He believed that the mouse experiment may also apply to humans, and warned of a day where – god forbid – all our needs are met.

"For an animal so complex as man, there is no logical reason why a comparable sequence of events should not also lead to species extinction. If opportunities for role fulfilment fall far short of the demand by those capable of filling roles, and having expectancies to do so, only violence and disruption of social organization can follow."

At the time, the experiment and conclusion became quite popular, resonating with people's feelings about overcrowding in urban areas leading to "moral decay" (though of course, this ignores so many factors such as poverty and prejudice).

However, in recent times, people have questioned whether the experiment could really be applied so simply to humans – and whether it really showed what we believed it did in the first place.

The end of the mouse utopia could have arisen "not from density, but from excessive social interaction," medical historian Edmund Ramsden said in 2008. “Not all of Calhoun’s rats had gone berserk. Those who managed to control space led relatively normal lives.”

As well as this, the experiment design has been criticized for creating not an overpopulation problem, but rather a scenario where the more aggressive mice were able to control the territory and isolate everyone else. Much like with food production in the real world, it's possible that the problem wasn't of adequate resources, but how those resources are controlled.

[Chimera]

.

[Chimera]

Worldwide issue it seems

[maj. tom]

Can you elaborate? Serious question.

Is it an issue with the distributer not being able to purchase from the manufacturer?
Is is a foreign exchange or supply chain issue?
Might there be another distributer that may be willing to pick up the product?

Was customer demand down on account of the current pricing and so it didn't make it viable to import?

With regards to Seven Seas is if specific to only the Cod Liver Oil? Do they have other products that they still have available in Trinidad and Tobago? If so could it be just because of lowered demand that some lines are being dropped?

Any further information is greatly appreciated.

Well some international perspective:

Tue 19 Jul 2022 18.30 BST

Australia faces a “dire” medicine shortage, with more than 300 drugs in short supply and another 80 anticipated to join the list, as doctors and pharmacists call for a national strategy to prevent the situation getting worse.

Drugs for diabetes, hormone replacement therapy, depression, nausea, stroke and contraception are among the 320 drugs listed by the TGA as in current short supply, with about 50 of these listed as critical.

Another 80 are listed as anticipated to be in short supply, including anti-venom for the funnel web spider, and a drug used in leukaemia treatment.

The Pharmacy Guild is also reporting shortages of off-the-shelf cold and flu medications, including liquid paracetamol for children, with new measures in place to try and manage supplies.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/20/australia-faces-dire-shortage-of-more-than-300-medicines-doctors-and-pharmacists-warn

3/16/2022

Drug Shortages Worsening, Pharmacists Say
https://www.ashp.org/News/2022/03/16/drug-shortages-worsening-pharmacists-say

'Never seen it this bad': Cold and flu medicine shortage leaves Ottawa pharmacy shelves bare
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/never-seen-it-this-bad-cold-and-flu-medicine-shortage-leaves-ottawa-pharmacy-shelves-bare-1.5998997

Germany sees alarming shortage in essential medicine
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-sees-alarming-shortage-in-essential-medicine/a-62567862

[hover11]

So what explains the other shortages which are not cold and flu related?

[maj. tom]

I know that to some people Covid was imaginary and make-believe, but it really affected the entire world in more than just deaths.

Data from a recent report from my company shows that over the past four years, more than half of hospital pharmacists ranked drug shortages as their number one challenge. Additionally, 91% of hospital pharmacy leaders believe that shortages are occurring even more frequently due to Covid-19. Since 2020, the percentage of hospital pharmacies experiencing 10 or more drug shortages has increased by 14%. With hospitals continuing to see year-over-year increases, the pandemic-fueled impacts on the pharmaceutical industry have been severe and far-reaching.

Covid-19 also triggered workforce and supply chain problems that have impacted hospital pharmacy operational efficiency, staffing and patient care. It highlighted the fragility of a supply chain that heavily relied on last-minute drug manufacturing at factories that were already at capacity prior to Covid-19. With each medication shortage consuming staff hours as they tried to find alternatives or hunt down medications in scarce supply, pressure was added to an already strained workforce to treat patients in a timely manner while remaining on budget. With post-pandemic staffing shortages quickly becoming a top challenge for health systems and hospital pharmacies alike, the increasing frequency and duration of drug shortages can quickly add up.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/07/14/the-covid-19-pandemic-highlights-intensified-drug-shortages/?sh=552cc0528554

[paid_influencer]

So what explains the other shortages which are not cold and flu related?

covid and skilled labor losses / shortages / disruptions

increasing nationalism and export restrictions

rich countries hoarding medications

shipping costs and disruptions

global inflation

corporations diverting stock to more profitable markets

[Numb3r4]

The fact that problem is one shared internationally makes it seem as if it due to the greater supply chain /lingering corporate issues stemming from the pandemic, so hopefully things will improve going forward.

Thanks for the responses.

[adnj]

So what explains the other shortages which are not cold and flu related?

Previously ansewered.

Some pharmacists have told me that certain drugs were in short supply because some of the chemicals that manufacturers needed for production were difficult to obtain because of shipping issues or manufacturer shutdowns in China due to COVID.

The president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Karen Price, said the situation had been exacerbated by the Covid 19 pandemic affecting international supply chains, with the issue becoming more acute in recent years.

“What we’re finding is that we’re suddenly getting patients saying I can’t get that medication or the pharmacist has changed it … so this is becoming an increasing problem,” Price said.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... cists-warn